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Laura Place
City reporter
Laura joined Coast News in San Diego County in March 2022 aftr two and a half years reporting on a little bit of everything for the Santa Maria Times in northern Santa Barbara County, including local policy, education, public health and immigration. While at the Times, she was a 2021 Center for Health Journalism California Fellow. While she has always loved writing, she grew her passion for journalism at Western Washington University, where she dedicated her time to various award-wining student publications as a writer and editor. Following bilingual reporting and translation experiences in Sevilla and Barcelona, she graduated in 2019 with BAs in Journalism and Spanish. Before moving to the Central Coast, she interned at The Lynden Tribune and contributed a mix of breaking and long-form stories, along with translation for the paper's Spanish-Language supplement.
Articles
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Topics
"If everybody in this community were vaccinated, we would have one person in the ICU. One," Marian Regional pulmonologist Zacharia Reagle said.
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Crowded homes creating the perfect environment for COVID-19 cases to spread like wildfire in Santa Maria, an epicenter for the virus in Santa Barbara County.
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As COVID-19 spread through Santa Maria in early 2020, basic information about preventive measures failed to reach much of the population.
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Communication and cultural barriers speed spread of the virus in one Central California community.
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For Latino residents living in multigenerational households, many of whom couldn't work from home, the situation spelled a potential death sentence.